Gamersmint Review: Dante’s Inferno

Dante’s Inferno can be called the bastard love child of an innocuous poet and a vicious God slayer since it seems to draw its inspiration from the divine works of Dante Alighieri and its gameplay from the heavens shattering journey of the God of War – Kratos - on his vengeful journey against Ares and Zeus. But does it manage to emerge greater than the sum of its parts or fall flat into the deep abyss of Hell itself?

Loosely based on the first book of the Divine Comedy, Dante’s Inferno begins with the main protagonist Dante slaughtering innocent captives in the city of Acre during the Third Crusade, only to be stabbed in the back by one of them. When Death himself descends to claim his latest prize, Dante successfully fights him off and steals his Scythe, only to return home and find his wife Beatrice murdered by an assassin and claimed by the Devil for his own, right in front of Dante’s eyes. On the painstakingly brutal journey through the 9 Circles of Hell, which results from Dante’s pursuit of reclaiming Beatrice from the icy clutches of Lucifer, events which have led to this Hellish confrontation are revealed as are the demons from Dante’s past.

Taking innumerous cues from the God of War series, the brutal gameplay of Dante’s Inferno would definitely have the poet Dante turning agitatedly in his grave since the original source material had the poet traverse Hell without lifting so much as a finger to and avoiding conflicts with tormented souls. The game replaces the poet with a badass crusader of Christianity possessing the Scythe (the only melee weapon available in the game) stolen from Grim Reaper himself, hacking and slashing his way through the 9 Circles of Hell. Decapitating any and all demonic enemies he encounters using a flurry of fast paced melee attacks along with a combination of ranged projectile attacks originating from a giant holy hand-held Cross, Dante can capture souls which act as experience points to power up weapons and magic. Particularly violent massacre of the monsters of Hell can also be brought about, when their health bars run low, by the player choosing to punish them (or liberate them by absolving them) by a short sequence of button presses. The combination of souls and the choice of finishing move results in levelling up Dante’s character in either the Holy or the Unholy Path and being able to upgrade the Holy Cross or Death’s Scythe weapons in accordance with the path chosen.

Various famous prominent figures mentioned in the poem can also be found in each Circle of Hell, punishing or absolving whom, greatly accelerates the progress up the chosen path. While absolving these characters starts a mini game with the player required to press a correct face button on the controller as per the visual cue, punishing them requires a single press of a button resulting in a grotesque animation. This makes following the Holy Path require much more effort, a choice which was perhaps intentionally put in, since Dante is a badass by nature. There are numerous demonic boss fights scattered across the 9 Circles of Hell, with some bosses of impressively gargantuan stature who require quite a massive effort to be taken down. An effective usage of magic, weapon combos and finishing moves ensures demons being churned into minced meat with great ease and pace, although there are quite a few times in the game when the difficulty suddenly spikes in magnitude.

Hell is depicted as is typically imagined – grim, desolate (apart from the waves of enemies who appear out of thin air) and intimidating. Being composed of 3 primary shades throughout – the drab rocky terrains (with some Gothic architecture living up to its name), the blood-red flowing rivers and the bright yellow burning pits – Hell can seemingly get a little jaded at times, especially with all the continuous moaning and screaming of the tortured souls half hanging out of walls or trying not to drown in the rivers of blood. For most of the part, the setting of Hell has been faithfully captured from the epic poem – from the river of Styx to the city of Din. Also, the enemies try and stay true to their corresponding Circle – Lust has nude females giving Bayonetta-esque poses and featuring lewd tentacle attacks, Gluttony has fat blobs of lard spewing undigested bits and so forth but the enemies often do cross over Hell’s Circles. As can be interpreted already, this is definitely not a game for minors or those easily disturbed. Apart from the massive oodles of brutality and disturbing imagery abound, another reason to keep this title away from kids is the absurd amount of nudity thrown in with any and all depiction of women featuring gratuitous amounts of bare bosoms.

Traversing each Circle of Hell requires running across the barren landscape, jumping across platforms, climbing walls and swinging across very strategically placed ropes. In his path to redemption, Dante also occasionally encounters puzzles which feature the use of some form of rotating levels, movable blocks or space-traversing portals. The platforming and puzzle solving would instantly feel recognizable to those familiar to the action adventure platformer genre, while a good checkpoint system minimizes the frustration resulting from incorrectly timed leaps and misjudged steps. Along the way Dante keeps running into the spirit of Virgil who, pretending to act as his guide, does little more than stand still and impart a few words of wisdom about what lies ahead for the crusader. Various hidden locations throughout each level also contain upgrades for the Holy Cross and Relics which can be equipped by Dante to improve his chances of successfully completing his improbable ordeal of facing and defeating Lucifer himself.

The game comes off as relatively short, clocking in about 7-8 hours on normal difficulty even after obvious attempts by the developers to prolong the game in the latter stages of the game. The numerous doors, which require battering down on the circle button to open, would by themselves, add a good chunk of time to the gameplay. Had the game been any longer though, the battles would feel more repetitive than they already do since a handful of enemy types are recycled almost throughout the game. Apart from concept art, costumes and movies which unlock themselves after completion of the single player campaign, there is a bonus feature called Gates of Hell which consists of 50 waves of demonic entities unleashed one after the other with a running clock in the backdrop. However, disappointingly, the only award for completing the challenge is a Gold trophy for the PS3 version (or achievement for the Xbox 360 version).

Dante’s Inferno plays quite smoothly throughout and the frame rate is quite stable, rarely if ever dropping, which is not surprising since a large number of enemies do not share the screen time at any given instance. The textures are well done except for some wall animations of condemned souls which appear to be of visibly lower resolution. Of the 3 types of cutscenes used in the game – pre-rendered CGI story cutscenes, in-game cutscenes and flashbacks consisting of 2-dimensional animations – the drawn animations are well done and the CGI cutscenes look fantastic but the in-game movies don’t quite seem to hold up in comparison.

The voiceovers in the game sound like they ought to – Beatrice sounds like a holy damsel in distress (most of the time), Dante sounds cocky and the Devil sounds formidable. The orchestral music, by the composers of Bioshock, complements the overall feel of the game quite well.

Next Page – Redemption

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